Radiation

Bloomberg News is reporting: For the first time in 15 years, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to evaluate whether its standards protect Americans from mobile-phone radiation. Julius Genachowski, the agency's chairman, has asked for a formal inquiry in a time when people are using smartphones for longer, more frequent calls. Get the full story at washingtonpost.com

ABUJA (Reuters) - As long as violence perpetrated by Islamist militants was more or less contained in Nigeria's remote northeast, the attitude of many citizens and expatriates in the more prosperous south was a shrug of the shoulders. But growing evidence that Boko Haram, or other violent groups or individuals inspired by it, are radiating attacks from their northeastern heartlands across Africa's most populous country has many Nigerians feeling that nowhere is safe. ...

Susan Barney identifies herself as one of a growing generation of "radiation babies." The 54-year-old Deerfield woman was just 11 months old when she received radiation treatment at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital for what she believes was tonsillitis (her mother has died and her father can't recall for certain). Radiation was standard protocol at the time, with high doses being used to treat everything from ear infections to ringworm to cystic acne. But soon physicians and researchers began...

The following items were taken from Naperville police reports: A landscape brick was thrown at a vehicle in the 3500 block of Caine Drive between 9 p.m. June 26 and 7 a.m. June 27. A 34-year-old Elmhurst man was arrested about 1:09 p.m. June 27 in the 1200 block of East Ogden Avenue and charged with retail theft for stealing a bottle of whiskey. A vehicle was stolen from the 1500 block of Fairway Drive between 2 p.m. June 26 and 3:10 p.m. June 27. ...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Mobile phone operator Softbank Corp said on Tuesday it would soon begin selling smartphones with radiation detectors, tapping into concerns that atomic hotspots remain along Japan's eastern coast more than a year after the Fukushima crisis. Parts of northeastern Japan are still off-limits due to high radiation levels after the Fukushima nuclear plant was devastated by a huge earthquake and tsunami, triggering meltdowns and spewing radiation. ...

(Reuters) - Government scientists have not been able to replicate a chemical reaction suspected of causing a radiation leak at a U.S. nuclear waste dump in New Mexico, complicating efforts to understand what went wrong, a U.S. Energy Department official said Friday. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, where drums of radioactive refuse from nuclear weapons sites and laboratories are buried in salt caverns 2,100 feet (640 meters) underground, has...

* Miniscule amounts of radioactive cesium detected * Not thought to be dangerous for human consumption * Tuna may transport radiation faster than wind or water By Deborah Zabarenko WASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) - Low levels of nuclear radiation from the tsunami-damaged Fukushima power plant have turned up in bluefin tuna off the California coast, suggesting that these fish carried radioactive compounds across the Pacific Ocean faster than wind or water...

The Environmental Protection Agency is more interested in furthering the cause of CO 2 taxation than addressing real pollution with real scientific facts. Fine soot, smog-forming chemicals, sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrous oxides have been known to be harmful to humans for years. These harmful toxins should have been gradually reduced starting 50 or 60 years ago. But now CO 2 has been drilled into a generation of Americans as the big culprit of global warming and...

According to the front page article in the Oct. 23 Tribune, the nuclear power industry is trying to establish a new category of waste, "below regulatory concern." This is opposed by environmentalists because they say any radio-activity increases the risk of cancer. There is no place on Earth free of radiation, and some places have a lot more of it than others. To illustrate, Colorado, like other places located at higher elevations, has more background radiation than places at sea level.

By Laura Zuckerman (Reuters) - A nuclear waste repository in New Mexico was ordered by the state on Tuesday to craft a plan to hasten the sealing off of underground vaults where drums of toxic, plutonium-tainted refuse from Los Alamos National Laboratory may have caused a radiation release. The directive by state Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn said the drums, buried half a mile below ground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near the town of Carlsbad, "may...

Carol Jouzaitis'article, "Old radiation claims hit U.S. brick wall" (Jan. 10), is symptomatic of the growing "Chernobyl" mentality surrounding certain early United States nuclear testing activities. Since Chernobyl, every unfortunate illness or symptom suffered by almost anyone in the former Soviet Union is blamed on radiation. One must distinguish between the ethical issue of informed consent and the biophysical question of how much actual risk was incurred in the particular case.

Q: Just got done reading your column with your comments regarding cardboard in front of the radiator and engineers designing shutters. I never used cardboard, but have noticed over the years especially big trucks (18-wheelers) have them. I think Subaru may have done just that on 2015 Subaru Outback . Anyway, always enjoy your expert advice and sense of humor. - R.L., Mokena, Ill. A: You are absolutely correct about carmakers putting shutters between the grill and radiator, but not for...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The radiation that might cure a breast cancer may also raise a woman's risk of having a heart attack or heart disease later in life, according a new study that looked back at the cases of 2,168 women in Sweden and Denmark. The risk "begins within a few years after exposure, and continues for at least 20 years," the researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. And that risk rises, they found, in proportion to the dose of radiation the heart...

By Laura Zuckerman (Reuters) - Kitty litter used to absorb liquid in radioactive debris may have triggered a chemical reaction that caused a radiation leak at a below-ground U.S. nuclear waste storage site in New Mexico, a state environmental official said on Tuesday. The waste disposal site, where drums of plutonium-tainted refuse from nuclear weapons factories and laboratories are buried in salt caverns 2,100 feet (640 meters) underground, has been shut...

TOKYO, July 21 (Reuters) - Japan's health ministry said it would investigate reports that workers at the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant were urged by a subcontractor to place lead around radiation detection devices in order to stay under a safety threshold for exposure. The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported on Saturday that an executive from Build-Up, a subcontrator to plant owner Tokyo Electric Power, told workers to cover the devices called...

(Reuters) - Managers mishandled a radiation leak at a New Mexico nuclear waste dump in which 21 workers were exposed to airborne radioactive particles due in part to substandard equipment and safety systems, a U.S. investigator said on Wednesday. But the contamination from the underground salt mine in the Chihuahuan Desert - where radioactive waste from U.S. nuclear labs and weapons facilities is deposited - was unlikely to have harmed the workers' health,...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Regardless of whether cancer patients sought to be involved in decisions about their treatment, those who were ended up more satisfied with their care, according to a recent study. On the other hand, patients who didn't get to share in the decision process were twice as likely to report feeling anxious, depressed and fatigued. "Now more than ever, we are really paying attention to the role of the patient in his or her own healthcare,...

(Reuters) - An investigative team plans to re-enter an underground nuclear waste site in New Mexico next week for the first time since an accidental release of unsafe levels of radiation there last month, a U.S. Energy Department official said Thursday. U.S. authorities now say that 21 workers at the Carlsbad-area "waste isolation pilot project" (WIPP) were exposed to radiation after the accidental leak from the site, which stores waste from U.S. nuclear labs...